Comment: Eisenhower supposedly said that appointing Earl Warren was the
"biggest damn fool mistake" he ever made. The wiki article on Warren says
that Eisenhower said it many times. Then it says that an Eisenhower
biographer can't find any evidence that he ever said it.

In your obituary of William J. Brennan Jr. (front page, July 25), you say the evidence is equivocal that President Eisenhower once called the nominations of Justice Brennan and Chief Justice Earl Warren his two biggest mistakes.

I was able to confirm the origin of this story for my 1993 biography of Justice Brennan from the diaries of Justice Harold Burton. Burton recounts a meeting with Eisenhower in 1957, when he told the President he was leaving the Supreme Court. He confirms that Eisenhower expressed his regrets in appointing Warren and Justice Brennan and described both appointments as big mistakes. The President described the favorable recommendation he had received on Justice Brennan as ''off-base.''

Eisenhower finished his observations to Burton by saying that in finding a replacement, he would pay more attention to ideology than he had in the Warren and Brennan appointments, which were both made for political reasons.